


Interludes, or The Winter Soldier is a Cat Magnet

by arachnidstardis



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Cats, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 19:13:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3499751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arachnidstardis/pseuds/arachnidstardis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for faun-songs</p><p>Bucky and cats</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interludes, or The Winter Soldier is a Cat Magnet

There isn't a year attached to his debriefing this time.  ( _Were there ever in the past?_ )  Snowflakes fall softly on his boots, his shoulders; the black leather is stark against the inches of snow he is wading through.  There are buildings around him, but the road is deserted and the lights in the windows flicker behind the gaps in thick curtains. He's not sure what country he's in, although the signs on the buildings are in the Latin, not Cyrillic, alphabet. The words mean nothing to him.  

 

He has been instructed to complete this mission on his own ( _Can we let him out on his own? He's been wiped, worry not)_ , to proceed to the largest house opposite the square and - 

 

"Mow."

 

He looks down again. Next to his boots is a ball of fur.  No.  It's a cat, its coat thick, full, and dark enough to hide its limbs.  Yellow eyes stare up at him, and when it opens its mouth to insist loudly again, its mouth is a splash of pink against its dark coat.  

 

He does not speak back.  It occurs to him that it would be odd to speak to a cat, anyways, but he has been instructed to keep complete silence.  It cocks its head when he acknowledges it, though, and rubs against his leg a bit, letting out another plaintive mewl, baring its teeth in the process. He takes a step.  It bounds over the deep snow to stay next to his ankle, and starts to purr. He takes another step, then another.

 

The cat follows.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The older girls seem to know not to move in the presence of their instructors, but he sees the younger girls in the back go wide-eyed as he walks in.  He's not surprised.  The mission brief included what he represented to them, the years he was frozen and they were told of him as though he was smoke on the wind, the boogeyman, not of flesh and bone.  They are dressed in simple clothing, hair plaited neatly, uniforms pressed, shoes shining. The girls are model citizens, right down to the way they regard him with fear and reverence. Most people he sees do, if not on first sight, then when he has a knife to their throat or a gun to their head. The few girls that stick out, though, are the ones that look at him more with curiosity, and one final girl at the end of the row, her plaits a burning red, who just regards him coolly.

 

He takes them to the training room, raising his eyebrow a fraction at the barre and the mirrors. _Those are unnecessary._ He then looks outside.  Flowers are opening, and the courtyard has been swept.  He points, and the girls all look in near unison, before filing back out the door and outside. 

 

They are in the middle of the most effective way to get out of a chokehold when your arms are pinned when they saunter in.  Two calico cats, one not too well-fed but mangy, the muscles pulling taught over its legs, the other thicker and fluffier.  They wind in and around the girls, up to him, to sit at his feet, and look up.  

 

He waves his hand, and the previously frozen girls practice the move on each other.  Kneeling, he holds out his right hand to the cats.  They ignore it, and go to the left, nuzzling it and pushing it with their heads.  He holds out a finger, and they rub their faces along it, revealing their sharpened teeth.  

 

They stay the rest of the session, and the next day, when he wakes in his room above the girls' dormitory, they are on the windowsill.  

 

Although he'll never speak it, he names them, mentally.   _Stepan_ and  _Yakov_.  They are never apart when they visit him, and sometimes, if he leaves the window open a crack, in the middle of the night he will have company when he cannot sleep.  Their eyes glint in the night when he lights a candle, entranced both by the flame and its reflection in his arm. Sometimes, he will catch a bit of sleep with the cats curled under each of his arms, the soft rumble of their purring comforting.

 

When he is recalled at the end of the summer, he sees them leaving the grounds, in step with each other.  Then, he is instructed to enter the truck, and they disappear from his view into the thick Russian woods.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_How did it get all this fur in its arm?  We do not give it furs to wear or sleep on! It is a weapon!_

 

_The girls had reported rumors of the lucky cats following him, but we never saw them....._

 

_It is of no importance.  Wipe it._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July in DC is excrutiating.  Steve has dragged him over practically every inch of this ( _Incredible! Historical!! Buck, look at all the people!!_ ) godforsaken city before finally settling on one of the many, many parks.  Despite Steve's insistence that they sit in the sun, he had dragged his (friend?) companion straight into the biggest, emptiest patch of shade he could find under a tree and sat right up against the trunk.  Wearing longsleeves in the summer was a slow death he would wish only on his worst enemies.  

"Buck, you have a bit of sunburn on your nose, here."  Steve held out a tube of sunblock towards him.  He scowled and turned away from the proffered lotion.  

He opened his eyes in time to see a cat trotting up to him.  It stopped inches from him, its fur short and dappled like the light falling on it.  

"Mow." 

Steve smiled.  "Aw, Bucky, it's like the strays back in Brooklyn.  They always loved you."

There is a quick flurry of memories across his mind, of his hands full of several different cats.  They fly away almost as soon as they arrive.  

He holds out his hand to the cat.  It smiles with its eyes in the way that cats do, and rubs its face back and forth along his fingers.  

"Steve?"  He starts at the sound of his own voice.  It is gravel and sand now, after not speaking all day.  He takes the bottle of water Steve offers him, nodding (He can't quite smile, not yet).  "Can we get a cat?"


End file.
